It’s tempting to reach for a pill when pain kicks in, but Australian researchers have found exercise may be one of the best ways to ease your symptoms.

They’re not suggesting you should necessarily go for a five-kilometre run or jump on the spin bike when you’re suffering a splitting headache or aching back – in fact, less may be more.

“Our study found that exercise was associated with substantial reductions in acute and chronic pain across all forms of exercise – whether that be via aerobic or resistance exercise, or through gentler movement such as yoga, pilates or tai chi,” said Dr Ben Singh, lead researcher for the University of Adelaide study.

“Importantly, we found that more exercise wasn’t necessarily better… shorter-duration and lower-intensity programs showed greater reductions in pain, suggesting people may not need to exercise harder or for longer to experience meaningful benefits.”

The umbrella study, described as the most comprehensive of its kind, looked at 157 systematic reviews on the pain-relieving effects of exercise, which together comprised 2736 randomised controlled trials and 221,279 participants.

Overall, researchers found exercise reduced pain by around 1.1 points on a 0–10 scale – a reduction around 60 per cent larger than the average pain relief reported for common pain medications in separate chronic trials.

Significant reductions were seen across a wide range of acute and chronic pain conditions, including musculoskeletal and neurological pain, headaches and migraines, back pain, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, back and neck pain, and cancer-related pain.

“When we exercise, our body releases chemicals including endorphins and serotonin that can help reduce how strongly we feel pain and increase our pain tolerance,” Singh said.

“Additionally, it helps calm inflammation and change the way our brain responds to pain, while also improving mood.

“These effects help explain why exercise can be such a powerful tool for pain management.”

Chronic pain is often treated with drugs, but they can carry risks. Photo: Pexels

Chronic pain, where people experience persistent pain on most days of the week, affects around one in five Australians aged 45 and over.

It is often treated with medicines such as opioids or anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin, but the researchers said that these “offer only modest relief and carry significant risks, particularly with long-term use”.

They added that although non-drug therapies such as exercise were increasingly being recommended, the advice was often vague.

“People experiencing pain may be told to ‘stay active’, rather than being given a specific, evidence-based exercise program that considers what type of exercise to do, how hard to work and for how long,” Singh said.

The finding that programs involving less than 120 minutes a week of exercise can be beneficial was seen as especially encouraging, given that current exercise guidelines recommending 150 minutes or or more can feel unattainable for people living with chronic pain.

“Our results suggest lower-duration programs may not only be more realistic but also more effective, particularly for those who are time-poor or fearful of exacerbating symptoms,” the researchers wrote.

Singh said health-care professionals needed definitive guidance on which exercises worked for which patients, and how to prescribe them effectively.

“At a time when we’re looking for safe and effective ways to manage pain beyond medication, these findings provide strong evidence for making exercise a more routine part of pain care.”